College of Media at Illinois

Professor Brant Houston, Knight Chair for Investigative and Enterprise Journalism, discusses the impact of the Internal Revenue Service’s attitude towards nonprofit news startups in a recent Columbia Journalism Review article. According to the article, the Internal Revenue Service appears be slowing down or blocking approvals of tax-exempt status for nonprofit news startups. Professor Houston notes that “some of these new nonprofit newsrooms could go under waiting for [tax exempt status], because it’s difficult to get donations if you don’t have the status.” Read the whole article…